What is Maeren feeling now?
Her pulse spiked, and with it, her power.
“Ella,” Jakobav said, voice low and urgent. “Could you rein it in, please?”
She tried. The fire answered by leaping higher.
Maeren lifted a hand, motioned the attendants back, positioning herself between them and Ella’s still-raging flame.
“Maeren, wait—” Ella’s cry tore out, panicked, protective.
Too late.
A tendril of fire snapped outward, curling toward Maeren as if it recognized her. The steel at her wrist caught the light a heartbeat before the flame raced higher toward bare skin.
Maeren shouted, reflexively raising her arms to block it. But before the fire could land, Jakobav moved with unnatural speed, his arm locking around Ella’s waist and twisting them both until he stood between Maeren and the strike. The shimmer around him surged outward, snapping into a dome that flared bright enough to swallow Maeren from sight.
The flames slammed into it and broke, deflected harmlessly away.
The shield vanished as quickly as it had formed.
Maeren lowered her arm, flexing her reddened hand once, her eyes narrowing as she looked from Ella to Jakobav. “New trick?” she asked, the bite in her tone undercut by the faint tremor in her fingers.
Jakobav’s mouth curved, a note of intensity shaping his voice. “I learn quickly when it comes to protecting those I care about.”
Attendants approached again, this time with ceremonial robes of rich fabric layered with inked designs. But the moment one brushed Ella’s arm, the cloth ignited with a hiss. The attendant jerked back, dropping the robe before the flames could catch their hands, and it crumbled into blackened ash at their feet.
Gasps rippled through the closest rows of spectators.
Jakobav swore under his breath, steadying her as the flames around her surged upward. “Soren,” he commanded, jaw tight,“my chambers. Bring one of the garments I had Kalenya make for her—now.”
Soren vanished instantly, Earth-Vating into the stone like a shadow swallowed whole.
Another attendant stepped forward with a robe for Jakobav, but he shook his head once.
Thank the gods. He isn’t leaving me uncovered alone.
The crowd erupted, their voices surging all at once into chaos—cheers, boots hammering against stone. The High Vexari’s voice cut through the noise, cracking like a whip, summoning guards, attendants, and ceremonial stewards with commands that echoed across the arena.
The eruption swelled, deafening, but then faltered, thinning into uneasy murmurs as the crowd seemed to sense a shift. The arena fell silent as mist drifted thicker across the floor, and beneath it, a presence twisted like a shadow taking shape. The High Vexari was no longer above them. She was at the water’s edge, robes whispering against stone, her inked face foreboding in its calm, unreadable expression.
In three soundless strides, she was face to face with them, staff lifted high. With a crack, she drove it into the stone right beside them, leaving it upright and quivering as if rooted there by the realm itself.
She reached for their hands, cutting through Ella’s fire without hesitation, seizing their wrists at once. Ella’s flames, shrunk back at the touch but still kissed her flesh, reddening her fingers.
“Show me,” she hissed.
Her grip was iron, turning their palms up in the same swift motion, exposing skin to light. The High Vexari didn’t flinch, nor did she loosen her hold as her gaze darted between their upturned wrists. The steam gathered on her lashes as her facechanged from disbelief to fury. A vein rose at her temple like a cord drawn tight.
“What have you done, Prince?” she asked, almost a whisper.
Ella looked down and saw it only because the Vexari made her see. A small black rose had bloomed on the inside of her wrist, ink dark as midnight, seemingly carved into the skin. Jakobav bore its twin, and the sight of it tilted her world.
It sat exactly where his teeth had closed over her, where his mouth filled with her blood beneath the water. The skin around the rose was raised and hot, as if it had been branded.
Sweat broke along her spine. Her knees almost slipped on the stone.
The High Vexari didn’t look at her. She held both wrists like evidence and fixed Jakobav with a gaze that could have split rock.
